South Korea and Japan agreed Wednesday on a concrete plan for the joint support of Afghanistan while urging their neighbor North Korea to stop stoking regional tension, according to Yonhap News Wednesday.
In their talks in Seoul, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and his Japanese counterpart Hirofumi Nakasone picked three tasks for their joint operation in Afghanistan ― vocational training, bean seed development and invitation of Afghan trainees. The agreement is a follow-up to a summit deal last month by the leaders of the two sides to cooperate in development assistance for the war-ravaged nation.
"South Korea and Japan will send their own experts to the South Korea-Afghan Vocational Training Center to educate Afghan vocational training instructors," Seoul's foreign ministry said in a press release. The center is located inside the U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram, about 80km north of Kabul.
The two sides will also share the cost of assisting non-governmental organizations working to improve Afghanistan's agricultural sector and exchange curriculums for Afghan trainees who will study in South Korea and Japan on their agreed joint government sponsorship program, it added.
With regard to North Korean issues, Yu and Nakasone urged the communist nation to stop raising tensions.
"The ministers shared the perception that North Korea's move to escalate tension is not desirable and urged it to act in a direction to contribute to the stabilization of the region," it said.
Pyongyang declared last week it was scrapping a non-aggression pact with Seoul and nullifying the de facto western sea border. Intelligence officials say North Korea is now getting ready to test-launch its long-range missile.
Nakasone threw his weight behind South Korea's current stringent policy on the North and its efforts to resume inter-Korean dialogue, while Yu promised Seoul's continued support for Japan's attempt to resolve the issue of its nationals abducted by Pyongyang decades...